Saturday, January 11, 2014

Dashed Off III

I Pt 5:1-4 as summarizing the Petrine mission

Christ guides the invisible Church both visibly and invisibly (cf Myst Corp Chr). The invisible Church is not said to be invisible because its members are unseen, or because their practices are invisible, or because they need nothing visible, or because all of Christ's work with them is invisible.

Classification can sometimes explain, but this is also why labels can look like they explain even when they do not.

All of Kant's errors can be traced to small errors in the beginning.

Space and time both presuppose part and whole as the more general form of appearance.

Experience teaches us that a thing could not be other than what could somehow be an actual experienceable thing.

What Kant says about Hume with regard to defining the limits of understanding could be said about himself with respect to defining the limits of experience.

Kant's claim A773/B801-A774/B802 that appeal to the hyperphysical would "relieve us from further investigation" treats appeal to hyperphysical as appeal to complete cause, not as appeal to primary cause.

Otto: the sublime as the schema of the numinous

that all accounts of evidence adequate to their subject presuppose causal principles
that all accounts of signification adequate to their subject presuppose causal principles
that the act of communicating performatively presupposes causal principles

organisms as deontic systems

Transfiguration as the sign of citizenship in heaven

We cannot be who we must be if we do not rise to the difficult good.

the attributing, narrating, and systematizing functions of reason

substance : assertion :: choice : narration

suppose we turned the Transcendental Aesthetic from 'space and time' to 'the geometrical and the arithmetical' (perhaps 'the measurable precisely as such')

the author as the transcendental ego of the character (also the freedom and the being of beings for characters)

Only causation connects theory to reality.

the mereology of spheres of cognition

The space we experience is not a mere abstract extension.

Kant thinks existence is not a predicate because he regards it as a modality.

Rhapsodic metaphysics is discoverer's metaphysics.

Kant doesn't seem to have any account of how concepts would or could explain anything -- they just fit intuition or not, and it is experience that "explains" everything, when put with the right concepts. But this is an abusive understanding of explanation. Everything that could actually explain is relegated to mere logical functionality on the subjective side.

We cannot determine from either the empiricist's experience or the rationalist's pure reason that life is the subjective condition of all our possible experience.

attraction that generates fantasy vs fantasy that generates attraction (this distinction is implicated in many great difficulties in romantic love)

Democracy is not a way to aggregate diverse preferences but to minimize interference in individual preferences. Indeed, it has to be so: even in a very small group with massive time and resources to make decisions, not everything will be able to be considered. Some preferences will be left out of any aggregation. Decision-making in a society is not merely a matter of aggregating preferences, but also a matter of priorities, external necessities, and procedural limits.

Deleuze on the Epicureans as pluralists is utterly implausible.

catholicity as linked to evangelistic character

What is given materially cannot be given except in some form.

Note Kant's plausible diagnosis of the difference in evaluating Hume's objections with respect to deism vs with respect to theism (PFM 356)

practical scientific metrology as the pursuit of invariance across methods

Corruption is diversified according to the kind of passions whose excess and defect induce it.

The dialectic of pure reason first considered as a natural illusion still has to be considered as a natural provision to an end; but considered first as a natural provision to an end it need not be considered an illusion at all.

Metaphysics, like any other science, is perfectly capable of being incomplete without ceasing to be a science.

By Kant's account of idealism Berkeley himself is not an idealist.

Space as such would have to be a form of inner sense, not outer sense -- the visual/tactile problem.

'the interest of the philosophical commonwealth'

We could not prove that there is no a priori knowledge unless we knew a priori what such a proof would have to be.

Kant's rejection of happiness as the foundation of morality is based on the idea that every person has his own private happiness or welfare, thus allowing only accidental unity.
Kant identifies self-love and the principle of private happiness; thus he has no notion of happiness precisely as correlative to human nature as intellectual and volitional. Or, in other words, he lacks a Platonic-Socratic notion of happiness (everything he says on the subject would by Plato be classified as doctrine of the Sophists or rhetors).

existence propositions in mathematics as practical propositions

Law depending on the good, we cannot determine what can be universally legislated except by reference to the good.

There is a great difference between what is advised and what is required; but this does not mean that we cannot ever get one from the other.

Kant's argument against moral sense theory also seems defective: it confuses means of knowing with what is known, and presupposes that moral sense is not natural but dependent on developed character.

Kant's uncritical theory of experience is the Achilles' heel of his practical as well as his theoretical critique.

The claim that law may have any content is a denial of human rights, or, indeed, of any kind of right prior to law, including those required by the functioning of institutions making, executing, and deciding law.

Law is not apt for supporting morality unless it naturally tends to subserve moral ends (which is not the same as claiming that it exists to support morality).

The concept of law is not a concept of an artifact but a concept of a principle of action that may be communicated by artifacts produced for it. Law is parallel to argument in this way -- indeed, for exactly the same reasons.

Customary law is not produced as an artifact but is instead evolved in the course of reason's interaction with the world.

Enumeration of rights is confirmation, not origination.

The single greatest burden in education is to lack the relevant mathematics; the second is to lack the relevant language.

Frege's judgment stroke as an epistemic operator

Kant's 'problematic' as indicating 'intelligible proposition'

Willing is a fitness or disposition to an end.

The primary disciplinary task for the spiritual beginner is to overcome thoughtlessness.

moral principles as principles of causality

The kingdom of ends is based on taking morals as analogous to nature considered teleologically. Thus it is a totality synthesizing the first twof romulations.

NB that Kant CPrR says that geometrical inferencer, as based in synthetic judgment, has the same structure as causal inference.

In practical everyday life we often use asymmetries in effects as indicators of living agents.

Kant's argument that moral systems based on an object of the will are heteronomous (GMM 444) requires that there be no natural, intrinsic, objects of willing, and that any objects of will must be known a posteriori and empirically.

To say that the person is autonomous and to say that the will is autonomous are two different things.

religious societies as multiplying spiritual resources

the eremitic life as manifesting the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church

To become a consecrated virgin is to become a sacramental precisely as a human person, indicating in a special way God as principle, in being a sacred person; Christ's love for the Church, in dedication of the body; and the life to come, as living the eschatological life.

the intrinsic apostolates of each of the sacraments

the Analogies of Experience as argument for transitive action

Without bringing in forces or something like them, description of motion is just a description of space by means of time.

Reason experiences itself as rational.

the threefold Petrine mission: orders, jurisdiction, and magisterium

icon-statues as stational in character (this distinguishes them from proper icons, which abstract from space, and pious paintings, which represent space as an aid and concession to imagination)

Admiration does not feed the stomach.

the value for which goods are exchanged vs the value by which goods are exchanged

a deontic logic where O = 'ought to be taken into account' and P = 'can reasonably be taken into account'

& and v as unordered list operations

Time is discerned by measuring order in change.

instrumentality & commercium of substances

Private relations are to be judged according to whether they are, according to prudence, probable and credible to piety.

You can't learn from failure if you are indifferent to it.

Civilization requires tradition, which requires discipline.

capital vices as teh sevenfold slavery

substitute 'objectivity' for Kant's 'intuition'

Dogma is the inner life.

The agent intellect gives to the world of sense the form of an intelligible world without interfering with its character.

lawfulness as the marker for objectivity

Teaching cannot be shown, only understood.

happiness as given a priori in practical reason
--> In the notion of a will the notion of tendency to good is already contained.

poetry as an art of philosophical description appropriate to discovery

God as the principle making possible the union of virtue with a sensible world appropriate to it

NB: Kant means by 'doctrine of virtue' doctrina *officiorum* virtutis

By the exodus the Lord has taught us that there is no security except in the one who can say I AM

Conservation is a means, not an end; and it subserves either the good of oneself or that of some others or the good of all.

A weakness in Kant's jurisprudence is the lack of customary right and law.

What is acquired through contract is acquired not by acceptation but by tradition (delivery).

What Kant means by property is 'object of acquisition' (Mine & Thine).

Maupertuis's general principle: When a change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action necessary for that change is as small as possible.

summation over possibilities as a sign of intellect

We refute not positions as such but positions as interpreted by support-position complexes.

Change in method changes the questions that are fruitful to ask.

Motherhood is the foundation of tradition.

sensus decori as a concern of law

Kant's schemata as showing that categories are not purely formal (cp. Schopenhauer).

Philosophers are continually being seduced by the wrong kind of power.

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For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.